The Post is a great "Gee Whiz!" newspaper. It is designed to get your attention on the way to wherever you're going in the morning. There's always a babe in a scantily clad state, usually on page 5. This is a plus in any news publication that seeks (and achieves) intellectual respectability through reflecting our most serious concerns in life. Irony? "That's sexism!"
Unlike the Times -- which I read every day -- the Post is hysterically funny. The editorial staff at this tabloid is unaware of just how funny the paper happens to be on a daily basis thanks to their stupidity. The most absurd items are attempts at profound analysis of complex events or international politics. I will now examine an editorial entitled: "A Despicable Enemy," in the New York Post, July 12, 2008, at p. 20:
"... the army revealed that it had identified the remains of two US soldiers taken captive in Iraq."
There is very little reflection on how we got into this mess in Iraq. There is no discussion in the editorial of what events preceded these tragic occurrences -- which are certainly not laughable! -- even if the analysis and explanation offered by commentators is, obviously, ridiculous. Typical comments in the New York Post sound like this: "They just killed our guys because those little brown people are weird and mean. Let's go and kick some ass. Didn't they have something to do with 9/11? They all look alike to me."
This is a statement also heard, pretty regularly, on the streets of New York. The sentiment is forgivable among persons who have lost a great deal because of 9/11 and who lack the education to appreciate all the complexities on the ground in the Middle East or the "geopolitical" considerations in the area. The identical "thought" is unforgivable among self-described "pundits."
"Pfc. Byron Founty, 19, and Queens-born Sgt. Alex Jimenez 25, were captured last May after heavy fighting in Iraq's then explosive Sunni Triangle."
"The body of a third captured GI, Pfc. Joseph Anzak Jr., was found not long afterward -- but Jimenez and Fouty's families held out hope for their return."
"Until now."
This sort of incident will become more (not less) common in the days and weeks ahead. There is a pent-up fury in Iraq, also in the entire Middle East -- and elsewhere -- in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo images of torture. This fury has been building up for several years. Dangerous fury is what Americans can expect to encounter most places in the world. There have already been incidents of Americans captured alive and tortured, sometimes for days, before being killed. Ironically, the tortures have mirrored the events in the infamous prisons that have identified America with atrocity in many places in the world. (See "The Torture of Persons" and for my views on 9/11, see "9/11: Philosophy in the Language of Wounds.")
Everything being done to America's detainees has been and will be done to U.S. soldiers. Still think the torture of detainees is a good idea? I ask that you repeat this sentence to yourself, slowly: "Someone with millions of dollars and highly intelligent assistance is thinking at this moment of how to kill you and many other Americans, while destroying a symbol of American freedom, even as that terrorist has a picture of the U.S. torture victims in his or her mind, every day."
How about now? Do you still think psychological torture is a good idea? I don't. You can't intimidate people into lying about these things. Torture is evil and stupid. People need freedom. Whether they are said or not, they will remain true for the foreseeable future. The risks to U.S. interests and American lives right now are astronomical. They will increase if this discussion does not take place. These things must be said, not by the morons in the so-called "elite" publications, but by us. Americans must take this debate into the public square, electronic or otherwise. This is about your childrens' lives.
"Captured Americans in Iraq have been subject to all kinds of torture -- including public beheading -- in the furthering of militants' sick propaganda aims."
Why do you not see those pictures or videos of beheadings on American news stations? Do you think it would have a "negative impact" on support for the war? Or the opposite? Do you believe that threatening me is an answer to what I am saying? Do you believe, for one moment, that I can be intimidated at this point in my life? I don't think so.
Within the next ten years, there will be multiple attacks against U.S. targets aimed at causing the maximum number of American casualties. These attacks will arise not only in the Middle East, also in Latin America and elsewhere -- including the "homefront." Americans will be tortured and sexually violated, videos of such atrocities will find their way on to the Internet and covers of magazines -- even as Americans will, mostly, not care all that much nor will they allow these events to interfere with their television viewing habits. This editorial comes to exactly the wrong -- if predictable -- conclusion. The people we are fighting against are "demonic." End of analysis.
I agree. They are evil. Why are they doing these things? Does it have something to do with the images of hideous tortures and callous indifference, together with the failure of America's tainted legal system to redress these wrongs? (See "Habeas Corpus" and "Meditatio ad Malum et Caritas")
The same newspapers appearing yesterday contain accounts of the death of a woman who sat in a hopital waiting room for more than 24 hours, died, was allowed to remain on the floor as "health care workers" stepped over her body, even as falsified reports indicated that her blood pressure was fine. Meanwhile, a young woman committed suicide because her account of a date rape was dismissed by cops -- probably in New Jersey -- who could not be bothered to investigate plausible accusations of torture. (See "Would you have helped Kitty Genovese?")
One would have to be a complete imbecile or a member of New Jersey's Supreme Court (redundancy?) to fail to see that these are revealing demonstrations of a decline in the moral quality and intelligence of our culture -- that is, a diminution in ourselves -- as a people abandoning their core principles of justice and decency. The "society of the spectacle" is just not very good at recognizing or responding to tragedy. Social autism has come to define us as an amusement-addicted people. We are growing more brutal, unfeeling, selfish, cruel and stupid. We are receiving exactly these qualities in response to our treatment of others in the world. It is not that we are shallow or insensitive, but it is OUR pride in these qualities that most offends people everywhere in the world. I am speaking of us, collectively, as a nation. We have to do something about this decline. Humility is a two-way street.
"Hegel rhymes with bagel," right? Let's burn the Koran. Let's torture Arabs. "We can learn from them."
Perhaps the "enemy" is a "behaviorist" seeking to condition us into a "greater awareness of others and more sensitivity to their needs." Psychobabble and entertainment-talk makes up the contents of people's minds. Genuine psychology, science, or other scholarship and media aesthetics is non-existent. "Philosophy is too hard to understand!" -- morons at The Philosophy Cafe said this to me. Yeah, philosophy is too abstract. The brilliant Post editorialist drew the worst conclusion:
"It also gives the lie to the claim that America somehow loses its 'moral standing' by, say, keeping terrorists locked up at Guantanamo Bay."
We do lose our moral standing by committing these crimes. No one is a "terrorist" who has not been convicted of the offense in a real trial, not a farce. Most people in U.S. custody in those hellish prisons have not been accorded minimal due process, after years of horrible tortures and confinement. Tit-for-tat is not going to work in this struggle against global terrorism, except that it will work against us. We better wake up and smell the napalm.
